


Unspoken

by WarriorOmen



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Early Days, Historical, Intimacy, M/M, Mild descriptions of violence, POV Alternating, Poetic Language, Pre-Canon, Shaving, flowery language, historical setting, silent communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27701969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorOmen/pseuds/WarriorOmen
Summary: For Yusuf’s hand was an offering uncertain.Trust is a complicated thing.--Exploring the concept of silent communication.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 126





	Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> This fic explores and works within a concept of silent communication. I'm considering making it part of a series, because it's a concept I'm really fascinated by. Especially with these two.

_For Yusuf’s hand was an offering uncertain._

\--

Tentative is the motto of their day to day.

_Do you trust me?_

_No, not yet._

_No._

_I._

_I do not know._

_Have I any other choice?_

Nicolò wants to express trust somehow. A way to bridge one of the terrifying gaps between them.

They have exchanged names, some words of common usage in a tongue they both have a passing familiarity with.

**But it is not enough.**

They don’t awaken bloodied. There’s no shock of blade in the middle of the night.

**Not enough.**

They cannot go on in such dances. Side eyeing each other with uncertainty. Unconsciously mirroring one another when they take semi privacy to think. Explore, ask.

God is more shared than they realize. The questions asked in agonized prayers and meditations similar, and yet different.

Evening in their endless desert, hot and sticky from hours of sun gives Nicolò an idea.

Yusuf is bent by the stream, washing his hands and sorting through some of his belongings, when Nicolò’s eyes catch the glimmer of silver steel in the low hanging sun.

It comes between Yusuf's fingers, Nicolò already walking to the stream and making an inquiring noise low in his throat. One he fervently hopes does not come across as rudeness.

Yusuf’s eyes are dark, so dark when his head lifts to meet Nicolò's. Unsure of how to make himself clear, Nicolò watches the brow he’s come to study furrow as he kneels at his side, eyes never straying.

He gestures to the razor, and then to his own face. Points to Yusuf, then back to himself. Fingertips rake slowly across his own bearded cheek, and he wonders if he’s imaging the strange, heated flash overtaking Yusuf’s eyes as he does so.

It feels like an offering. Nicolò realizes it is such, that he’s leaving himself vulnerable and open. How he must appear to Yusuf, sunk to his knees before his lightly armed unwitting companion, offering himself to too he.

Nicolò's back is to the streambed, Yusuf’s blade to his front. Low, exposed. He feels nervous tingles in his fingers and tension in his spine.

_Will you?_

_Kill?_

_Destroy?_

_Hurt?_

_No, never hurt. Not now._

How else can Nicolò offer his trust?

In Yusuf’s fingers, the blade is gripped tighter. In Yusuf’s eyes, the sun flashes and burns merciless gold that makes Nicolò’s breathing hitch.

_Beautiful, he is._

_So beautiful._

Before him, Yusuf finds his soap in his small bag. Nicolò lets the burnt black gold of Yusuf’s eyes drag him down, pull him in. Losing himself in sensation. Shame is not the nature of the tingles that crawl their sensual pattern down his spine. Fear is not what catches in his throat when Yusuf’s soap wet fingers brush along his chin.

Yusuf is question and concern, uncertainly and curiosity as his fingers trail across Nicolò’s face. Slow, inspective. Nicolò nods as steadily as he can, encouraging. Even if Yusuf’s air-gentle, yet maddeningly strong grip touches his face. Keeping such nodding mildly aborted.

_To be at your blade once more, I offer trust._

_Let this truce breathe a new name._

_Should you have I._

His hand drops.

It is only momentary, Nicolò never looking down as he drags them through the soap submerged in minimal water, never do his eyes stray from their straightforward pierce, gentle. Open. Holding himself still, keeping tension as loose as he can from his person.

Yusuf’s legs shuffle when he drags his hand back away, when he looms so impossibly tall over Nicolò, and watches.

Nicolò considers their near identical heights, before he shifts, stretching and sitting himself cross-legged so Yusuf can kneel, giving him some leverage to work with. Aware that with each movement, he offers more and more of himself up.

His own blade, his bow, these are further away.

But he has no need of such things.

When Yusuf kneels, he’s close, when his fingers graze Nicolò’s chin, dragging soap and water, he breathes. Slow, steady, like he’s approaching a skittish cat of the street.

Nicolò breathes alongside him, hands folded in his lap, not touching. Demanding nothing, asking everything.

Of the impossible.

Of the approachable.

Of the unknown.

He’s scared, but he realizes it’s not of Yusuf. But of everything else. A world he’s seemingly left to stride in, untouched by the end.

Yusuf must be scared too, how could he not be?

What of his home?

His family?

Nicolò knows his own forever lost, but what of the life that came before?

Maybe he was drifting.

Maybe he was only coasting.

Maybe this was the world he was supposed to see.

Will he ever know?

**Breathe.**

Yusuf’s grip is sturdy, explorative, like he’s unsure of the texture beneath his fingers. His hair, Nicolò can see, sits somewhat tighter than his own. Nicolò wonders what it feels like to his fingers, and perhaps one day he’ll ask.

Scratchy, for sure.

Bristles of a brush unkept.

His eyes have begun to water from the dryness of holding his gaze, and he is unashamed to hitch in his breathing from effort when Yusuf’s fingers move more firmly across his cheek, his chin, asking him, over, and over, with each pass.

_How are you letting me do this?_

And were Nicolò to read his thoughts, he’d say.

_I must._

For calloused fingers, they are not rough. The firmness not unpleasant. He makes himself blink, forces back clarity. Yusuf has blurred in the burn of his stubborn determination, and the visage that comes back to clarity forms a knot against his heart. A kick of a donkey to the chest.

More pleasant, perhaps.

Yes, more pleasant.

Lovely.

He misses the touch of the fingers the second they fall, leaving his beard an open wound to be sealed by the sun, by the blade Yusuf holds.

It’s warm to the touch, when Nicolò only bears his neck further, exposing muscle and vulnerable veins.

_Sat in the sun too long._

_Come,_

_Come,_

_Come to me._

He dares not swallow, but then does, a flex of movement along his jugular.

The hand at his neck, blade free, so gentle.

_Please._

It’s the gentleness in the first passage that is near to Nicolò’s undoing. Barely does he feel the scrape of the edge to his skin, hair to thick to accept. He sighs with his full body, and bites back sudden tears.

_No._

_Not that._

_Safe, be safe._

A world of harshness left behind. For now, for the moment.

Yusuf is so close, he can feel his air, steadily loosened out against his own face, skin warm where the fingers hold him prone at the neck.

The second pass is as the first, steady, untouched to the skin.

_What is happening?_

_Why does he do this?_

_Is this it?_

Yusuf did not know what to make of the man, setting himself out, prostrated to the ground and open, so open. Eyes that stare questions Yusuf has no answers for. A face that greets and welcomes and drives Yusuf mad with confusion.

_Why?_

What is he to do with this?

No answer of the world is going to come from a foreign man. No understanding nor outlet is going to give him any clarity.

But here he was.

Cheated out of the certainty of having come to the world and left. As all the physical beings should.

Here, a desert with another curiosity.

Open.

_Is this truly the same man, who snarled and brandished a blade, fire in his eyes and hate in his heart?_

_Or is it a man known not?_

_Think it okay, do you? That this changes the mess we left behind?_

Questions torment Yusuf. Asking himself everything he can with every stretch of desert beneath their feet and clouds above their heads. A horizon untouchable, a merciless dangle of why’s.

But the man, _Nicolò,_ is so still. So _trusting._ Beneath his fingers, against his blade, he barely moves. His eyes are so open, so impossibly bright and light; Yusuf cannot help when he shuffles closer, demanding, encouraging. Not knowing entirely what he wants or understanding of it.

But knowing, that in this, there is _something._

_You will not dare hurt me again._

_I see this, for what it is._

_Or what it tries to be._

_Let it succeed, perhaps._

The blade drags it’s third and fourth glide up his chin, the fingers he keeps pressed to Nicolò’s neck flex, and when there’s a little gasp of pleasure Yusuf pauses, only to do it anew.

Again, that gasp, louder. Near musical.

A flash of red sparklingly the cheeks he’s trying to uncover, deep into the solid dark crevasses of eyes so bright.

_Alright._

_Not so entirely different, then._

_At least in this._

Nicolò did not mean to move himself, but Yusuf is so close, and he’s left himself so exposed.

He could blame circumstance and would know it a lie in moments.

Shame, guilt, these are beliefs and emotions he’s wholly been made intimately familiar with.

And yet, the look he’s receiving is not of any.

There is no coarse snarl touching those lips, no sudden dragging tension to his shoulders. No snapping of the spine.

Yusuf just watches him, and Nicolò breathes a steady near whimper when the blade finds his throat again, finally able to feel the metal to his flesh.

It reminds Nicolò of fishing, those final moments when the entirety of the world hangs in balance, when air itself ceases movement as the snare catches the fish, stillness.

So fast, so quick.

But here,

So astronomical.

Nicolò forces down a shame, hoarse laugh. The irony of his life not lost on he.

_God might have a sick sense of humour._

_Why else, is he here?_

_Yes,_

_It would be that way._

Yusuf could say his name, he could say Yusuf’s. He could stop this at any moment. And yet, he does none of such and Yusuf neither.

The blade, again, finds a glide, again, it drags up his chin. Nicolò’s heart is sure to burst, sure to heard in it’s relentless thud beneath his tunic. Sweat lightly dusting his brow and uncredited to the sun.

Yusuf had more questions than before.

Nicolò’s hair is thick, thicker than he expected, forcing him to move closer still to get the bristles of it free from the skin. His blade needs a wipe, he barely looks as he drags it across the skin used for such.

He cannot find it within himself to look away, not from the canvas Nicolò leaves him, not from the questioning moment of a thread hung in balance and outstretched.

_What of it?_

_What of it all?_

Yusuf is too old to doubt things about himself, too old to believe he had a life that would follow whatever pattern of necessity possibly negated, possibly not of pleasure he would require.

Of course, he’s to get older still.

Knowledge, that does nothing to quell the furious rampage taking root within his stomach, across the bridge of ribs that barricade and house his confused soul.

Methodical, he believes, as again, and again, the blade passes.

He could cut so easily. So easily, he could just turn the blade and press. Could blame it a nick, could consider it accidental. Dangerous things they are after all.

Nicolò would know the truth.

Still, he pushes, just so, feather light, but sharp.

Nicolò hitches, inhales hard and low, watching.

He does not move.

To that, he does not move.

Not in, not away.

So still.

Yusuf does not want to see, nor deal with more blood.

Is it only that?

Necessity does not always equate to desire, and if he can keep them both unbloodied, then there is a hope of it.

Still, he presses again, not enough to nick, not enough to harm. But it is a near thing, any closer and there is risk.

Nicolò lowers his eyes to meet Yusuf’s, the downward gaze a marvelous feat that is half-bracketed by his lashes, longer Yusuf realizes, than he’d assumed them to be.

_I know._

_Or I do not know._

_But I can guess._

_Perhaps._

Yusuf is shaking.

He is not sure the other man is aware he’s shaking; the blade held so steady to his throat, a betrayal of the trembling Nicolò can see in his arms, movements of fabric from his sleeves.

Carefully, he lifts his hand up, so carefully, he grazes his own fingers along his wrist. Where fabric ceases and flesh begins. Slow, he drags a path along Yusuf’s pulse, careful not to dislodge his grip.

Yusuf gasps, a light, tinny thing.

_What are they to do?_

Nicolò waits, he does not drop his fingers, he does not grip as the pressure begins to cease and the blade is dragged further up his chin, to his cheek, to the hair that falls between them and the awkward balance of a blade held essentially by two.

Only when Yusuf’s eyes meet his, does Nicolò let his finger fall back to his lap, only when the movement becomes rhythmic, does he finally allow for the last offering.

He closes his eyes.

A blade to his cheek, held in the grasp that shakes so, he closes his eyes.

_All yours, then._

Yusuf swallows when Nicolò’s eyes fall shut and holds himself still as jumbled thoughts plague his mind.

Back on that battlefield, both so full of rage, he’d felt the man grind into himself, and returned the favour with the same angry vigor.

It could not be considered sex, not to Yusuf. Angry, furious rutting brought on by the senseless anomaly of not staying dead when sliced and fueled by anxiety, he would not call it so.

When he thought of sex, of intimacy, he thought of passion. Of gentle touches in dark and low-lit rooms, or in the bathing graces of sunlight after prayer. Of eager hands after swims and sugar sweet brushes of lips after feasts.

Not of a vile be-raged man shoving a sword into his chest and declaring nonsense absolutions in a language he did not speak.

Vileness, perhaps, dead on the battlefield.

Like this, more and more revealed to Yusuf’s fingers and blade, he’s almost pretty.

No, _is_ pretty.

Lovely, even.

Something to be said of his hair, needing a better wash than the fervent hasty scrubs he knows Nicolò subjects it to, but lovely all the same.

Pink tinges decorate the skin that Yusuf reveals anew, with Nicolò’s eyes closed and no longer burrowing a pathway into his soul, he lets himself look.

And look.

There are only two more swipes to make, and Yusuf feels tethered as he lets them be so. At the final pass, he holds the blade to Nicolò’s cheek, flat, and feels like a whole world has been revealed in the process of his work.

Flat, the blade sits, raw, bared flesh warm from touch, from sun and their understandings. Nicolò’s only movement is to tilt his chin slightly, to push oh so gently into the dual touch.

Smooth.

Yusuf does not know who moved first, does not know if Nicolò’s eyes are open or closed, as his own seem to be doing the same. His lips are dry, his exhale is warm to Yusuf’s mouth, swallowed, an errant non thing.

Yusuf must move his hand, must let the blade drop to Nicolò’s lap, abandoned a moment, replaced with Nicolò’s own fingers through his own. Tight, sure.

Nicolò is not crying, but it is a near thing.

If Yusuf can hear his heart now that he’s so close, he is not surprised. Were he capable, he’d tune it’s beats to call out to him, even amongst the dizzying sensation of losing himself to touch and reverence.

A tilt of his own head lets Yusuf chase the heat of his mouth, a low moan crawling a vicious path up his own throat, swallowed before it can be heard to the world.

Not that said world has too hear such things, only Yusuf, only he.

_He is so soft, so warm._

Nonsense thoughts, but Nicolò feels safe with them all the same.

_This is not the end._

_Aye._

_This is not the only thing._

_Aye, yes._

_But for now,_

_Yes._

_Yes._

They part on the same exhale, Yusuf studies Nicolò’s face, is drawn to kiss those cheeks he laid bare, the skin open to him. The nose that shadows so much and the eyes that close again to let him in.

Nicolò sinks into him, into his hands, his chest, and it is then he realizes his heart is not the only one hammering out a rapid call.

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes because I have a lot of thoughts about this.
> 
> I kind of like to think of my fics as 'moments' and sometimes they touch upon bigger pictures and elements and sometimes they do not. I love thinking of these stories as windows, if you will, into the characters lives.
> 
> The writing in this is not going to appeal to everyone, and I'm aware of that. It's a medium I do like exploring, but if it's not your cup of tea that is totally okay, and I promise I don't do the flowery thing in all stories. I just have fun with it.
> 
> I operate within the headcanon that Joe and Nicky both knew themselves to be gay, or an equivalence they may have used historically and both had some experience with intimacy prior to meeting. I also sometimes try to do references to other fics I've written, so it all feels like it exists within the same universe. I do not always succeed, but I try.
> 
> Straight razors are incredibly sharp. I don't know how anyone historically used such a thing without injury. I applaud such talent. Or maybe not everyone is as hopelessly clumsy as I am.
> 
> (It's that, it's definitely that)
> 
> I also didn't intend this to be the fic at first when I was thinking about silent communication, and had a modern day mission fic planned instead. THEN I remembered how badly I had wanted to write a shaving fic and..well yeah.
> 
> As always, self-beta'd, and thank you for reading!
> 
> I do the [Tumblr](https://coffeebeannate.tumblr.com/) thing. Come say hello if you do as well!


End file.
